Question: What forms of exercise and diet do you advise?

Sri Chinmoy: Sports, running, jumping, anything that keeps our body fit. Again, we don’t have to do anything too vigorous. We don’t want to strain or overtire ourselves. We do need the perfection of the body, but ours is not the aim to become Olympic champions. If an aspirant is good enough as an athlete to participate in the Olympics, well and good. But for most of us, our aim is not to go to the Olympics. Our aim is only to transcend our capacity, always to transcend our individual capacity. I will compete with you, not to beat you but to see my own capacity. My aim is to see how much I have achieved, and to transcend my own capacity. When we participate in sports, we try to keep before us the idea of our own self-transcendence. We wish to see how far we can go. We have a certain goal, but our goal is only for today. Tomorrow it will be our starting point. Today’s goal cannot remain the goal forever. A child’s goal is to go to kindergarten. Then he goes from kindergarten to primary school, and gradually to high school, college, university. Our goal also is constant self-transcendence.